Financial fraud is a problem. People have devised creative ways of defrauding financial institutions including altering financial document data. People have also been known to create counterfeit copies of financial documents (and in particular financial instruments) and to pass those counterfeit copies through the financial system. For example, fraudsters have been known to alter checks to change the amount or the name of the payee; fraudsters have also have also been known to duplicate checks and attempt to cash the duplicates.
To combat fraud, financial institutions may keep records of financial documents that have already been processed. For example, electronic images of cashed checks are captured and archived. However, in North America alone, billions of financial documents may pass through the financial system each year. Thus, efficiently searching through the billions of financial documents for duplicate documents poses a significant problem.
At the same time, accidental duplicate processing of documents may occur as a result of error or oversight, for example, on the part of a bank or financial clearing centre. For example, a transaction may be passed twice through the banking/clearing system. Although detectable and correctable, such errors tend to become apparent after funds have been transferred, making their correction time consuming, labour intensive, and ultimately costly.
Accordingly, there remains a need for methods and systems for quickly, and in real time, detecting processing of duplicate documents, particularly financial ones.